I think your analysis that mutuality would deprive babies of their right not to be eaten is overly hasty and suffers from a shallow evaluation of the merits of that argument. The 'right' not to be eaten is not a 'natural' right of human babies. It is a social right, granted within the human community by mutual assent and accord. It is quite obvious that babies are among the favorite foods in nature.

But don't you then end up believing that people in societies which don't assent to those rights don't have them? It's an acceptable position, of course, but it seems undesirable to say that slaves in the C18th southern US didn't have a right to life and freedom.

I think your analysis that mutuality would deprive babies of their right not to be eaten is overly hasty and suffers from a shallow evaluation of the merits of that argument. The 'right' not to be eaten is not a 'natural' right of human babies. It is a social right, granted within the human community by mutual assent and accord. It is quite obvious that babies are among the favorite foods in nature.

it seems undesirable to say that slaves in the C18th southern US didn't have a right to life and freedom.

The rights of slaves to life and freedom were argued into existence. Once the abolitionists succeeded in establishing the grounds for the argument upon whether God's commandments, as conceived by the Christian religion, required its adherents to treat slaves with a love equal to their love for themselves, then it became a theological battle over what God's law required of Christians.

The most acceptable formulation of this would be that the right of slaves in the C18th southern US to life and freedom were unrecognized. Once we emerged from our state of confusion, those rights were recognized and became effective as well as implicit. But that just disguises the theological content of the argument.

so if i come across a tribe in the jungle that practices slavery and cannibalism and rape of captives etc. then i can just do that to them?

If you have no moral philosophy, then nothing either internal or external would prevent you from enslaving, raping, or eating members of that tribe, if you had it in your power to do so.

If you are a moral philosopher and accept the tribe as being equally as human as those you have granted the right to not be enslaved, raped or eaten, then your philosophy requires you to fall back exclusively on your own right to self-defense so that you may freely resist being enslaved, raped or eaten without imposing those outcomes on this hypothetical tribe.

there are moral obligations to the same extent that there are legal obligations. it's a personal choice to follow them, but if you choose not to the community may punish you. of course the legal community's punishments are stricter and more coercively applied than the moral community's.

I'm stuck on the pure veganism people due to a friend explaining that a local dude who is semi-prominent in some circles, who talks about the morality of veganism, going on about how he shouldn't need health insurance. Because he's not old, vegan, and has a really good motorcycle insurance policy. So there's no chance he'd have a need for a lot of medical spending.

I mean ideally 99% of people with health insurance would have that profile, that's why it's insurance but... mote in my brother's eye etc

lots of very left-wing people are very averse to veganism and get upset about it. my favourite one i ever got - and i never, ever proselytized when i was vegan - (obviously from a fucking white person) was some concern about it being a colonialist mindset because first nations peoples' traditional ways of life include hunting and fishing, using the whole animal etc. and the very obvious rejoinder was "you're white lol and I'm not telling indigenous people to stop their very responsible stewardship of their traditional lands i just think you, white person, should maybe consume less animal products"

OTM but you can also assure them that late capitalism uses the whole animal much more efficiently than First Nations people who lack jello and crayons etc etc

xp aside: Most of the reason I have health insurance is so that I don't get charged the cash payer price. Emergency rooms in the US, especially, will demand charges drawn from thin air for anyone who doesn't have corporate negotiators working on their behalf.

the "I'm a very responsible person" argument completely fails when you realize insurance (in the ideal case, admittedly our insurance system is really broken) is there for the cases where you'd really have no way to pay. like, surprise! you're the one 35 year old in hundreds of thousands who has some weird cancer and treating it costs $$$

or you get hit by a car and no one can find the driver, or... really a million possibilities